The Not-So-Common Trees - Mahagoni
Even as the name of the tree suggests, this is a tree of huge dimensions. It is a native of West Indies, introduced into the tropical countries of South Asia.
Though I read of plantations of the tree, in Chennai, at any rate, it was not all that common. Years ago, I saw a huge Swietenia mahagoni - the botanical name of the tree - growing in the Agri-horticultural Gardens, a good part of which now supports the Drive-in restaurant of the New Woodlands Group of Hotels.
Apart from its huge size, what remains in my mind about that tree is,
first - its branches served as home for an epiphytic orchid called Vanda
Roxburghii and, second, its fruit stood upright, defying gravity. This was about 50 years ago, and since then I've been trying to locate the tree elsewhere in the city.
Even as I was despairing to see another
mahagoni, I saw not one but five or six of them in the compound of the bungalow of a friend of mine, T R Kannan, at 6, General Collins Road, Vepery. Another man might have made a pretty pie, selling them off to the timber-merchant of the area but not Kannan, who I noticed had a great love for Nature and its beauties.
If the timber merchants offered the kind of price to which another man would have readily fallen, it is not for nothing.
The tree grows to a height of 60-70 feet and the trunk reaches a circumference of anywhere near five to six feet, yielding timber of high class with which furniture fetching a six-figure sum could be made. But, the class is concealed by a rugged exterior, bark that is rough to touch and broken irregularly. The wood of the tree is also used in ship-building.
The
mahagoni tree is a member of the neem family, Meliaceae. Naturally, it shares several features with the neem. For instance, its leaves are feather-like, with the leaflets borne on either side of a central rachis with an unpaired terminal leaflet. However, the leaflets of
mahagoni are much smaller and have a smooth margin, though
of course, they are divided by a large vein into two unequal portions, same as in neem. As already mentioned, the fruit stands upright. It has a woody cover that breaks up
(cf: neem), releasing winged seeds; obviously, the upright orientation of the fruit is an
adaptation for wind dispersal. On the other hand, the fruit of neem has fleshy pulp under its skin, with a single seed at the core, suited for dispersal by birds.
This is what the present-day jargonists call biodiversity - similarities and dissimilarities
growing together within the same family. You may extend this understanding of biodiversity even by taking a look at siblings.
